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Index: Seattle-area home prices fell 5.8 percent in September

The price of a typical house in the Seattle area fell 5.8 percent in September from a year earlier, according to a new report.

That comes after a 4.7 percent drop in August and was the largest decline since February in First American CoreLogic’s LoanPerformance Home Price Index, which defines the area as King and Snohomish counties.

The price of a typical home nationwide declined for the second month in a row — 2.8 percent in September and 1.1 percent in August — after rising slightly for the first seven months of the year, according to the index.

Excluding distressed sales, the price was down 0.7 percent from a year earlier.

“We’re continuing to see price declines across the board with all but seven states seeing a decrease in home prices,” Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic, said in a news release. “This continued and widespread decline will put further pressure on negative equity and stall the housing recovery.”

Seattle had the 11th-largest decline of 45 areas in the report. Year-to-year changes ranged from a drop of 10.9 percent in Orlando to a 4.2-percent increase in Riverside, Calif. Riverside is one of the areas that has seen the largest home-price declines during the recession, giving it some more room to recover now.

The index is one of several that look at repeat sales of the same homes to gauge market movement, rather than depending on what happens to sell in any given period, but does not list actual prices. The median house sales price in King County was $375,000 in October, down 0.7 percent a year earlier, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service’s latest report.

Excluding distressed sales, the index found the typical price declined 4.9 percent in September from a year earlier in the Seattle area and 0.7 percent nationwide.

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